You’ve got a month.
That’s how long you have to complete an album of 10 original songs or 35 minutes of original music, according to the RPM Challenge. Whip your band into shape and crank up the tunes. Better hurry, it’s a short month and most decent stage explosives have a 10-day waiting period.
If you’re not ready to record quite that quickly, hop over to February Album Writing Month and write the songs this year for next year’s album challenge. And then in June you can write a screenplay about your whacky experiences for ScriptFrenzy, or wait till November to write a novel about it for NaNoWriMo.
The whole point of these insanely deadlined events is to get your creative juices boiling and spilling out over the sides. Stop thinking about doing something and do it! Don’t worry about how good it is. No one else will be. Just do it, to prove to yourself you can do it after all.
These kinds of challenges are getting more popular every year, and I think we should have more of them.
Cook a Four Course Meal in 5 Minutes Sure, anyone can whip up a banquet in a few hours, with a prepared list of ingredients and recipes. Let’s see what you can do with 5 minutes and the current contents of your fridge. Be creative, be daring, and consider the superior heating properties of an arc welder.
May “My House” Madness Build your own home! You can buy the materials, clear the land, and acquire the permits beforehand, but everything else has to be completed all by yourself in the month of May. You’ll quickly find little shortcuts to speed things along, like skipping insulation and not using two stairs where one will do. Do you really need all those pipes? Your goal at the end is a livable house, where “livable” is defined as “you’ll get through the night if you don’t breathe too loud.”
April is Baby Month You know how you’ve been saying you wanted to bear a child but you didn’t want to take 9 months out of your life to do it? Just jump right in and crank one out in thirty days. Sure, the little nipper might be missing a few bits here and there, but the important thing is you did it. Pair up with other speedy mommies and compete to see who can get her child the closest to mammalian.
Career Month From midnight August 1 to midnight August 31, have a career. Find a company, start in the mailroom, and ruthlessly work your way up to the top. Or start a new and original company! Make your business plan, hire like-minded folks, take the world by storm, become the new hot thing, go public with your stock, weather a few takeovers and a slump or two, rummage through your employees 401(k)s, and get out in thirty-one days with a handsome pension just before the SEC gets there. It’s fun!
New Faith February Start your own religion! You know you want to. Devise a moral code, define the afterlife and the existence of a deity(ies), gather unto you your flock, and whip up some snappy vestments in 28 days. It doesn’t count unless you get one of your holy days recognized as a federal holiday.
Mark your calendars now. And be great, cuz I am totally going to write a song about you.